City Administrator Deanna Santana is one step closer to leaving Oakland to become city manager of Dallas.

The Dallas City Council on Wednesday pared down the list of finalists to three: Santana, former Wake County, N.C., Manager David Cooke and Dallas First Assistant City Manager A.C. Gonzalez.

Santana, who last month was selected as one of five finalists for the job, said she is “honored to have continued in the process.”

The finalists will be in Dallas from Jan. 15 to Jan. 17 attending council sessions, touring city facilities and interviewing with council members.

The interviews will be scheduled by the executive search firm Bob Murray and Associates. That is the same firm that recently abandoned the search for Oakland’s next police chief after claiming that the recruitment had been compromised because of inappropriate conversations between candidates and city representatives.

— Matthew Artz, Staff

San Francisco

Fundraiser draws criticism for group

An advocacy group is facing sharp criticism for using the case of a 13-year-old Oakland girl declared brain dead in a bid to raise money for a proposed ballot initiative.

An attorney for the family of the girl, Jahi McMath, and from Children’s Hospital Oakland, where she was declared brain dead following sleep apnea surgery, both condemned the move.

Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court said Wednesday that he emailed a plea to supporters before Christmas asking for donations to lift the state’s 38-year-old cap on medical malpractice awards. Too often the limit of $250,000 creates an incentive for hospitals to let children like Jahi die, he said.

Attorney Christopher Dolan, who represents Jahi’s family, is a board member of Consumer Attorneys of California, the prime group funding the ballot initiative to lift the cap on pain and suffering awards. But he told the San Francisco Chronicle he felt that using Jahi as a fundraising tool was “a bad thing to do.”

Hospital spokesman Sam Singer said the campaign should not exploit the Jahi McMath case.

Jahi underwent surgery at Children’s Hospital on Dec. 9 to treat severe sleep apnea. Surgeons removed her tonsils and other parts of her nose and throat to widen the air passages. Following the surgery, she bled from her mouth and nose and went into cardiac arrest. Doctors declared her brain dead three days later and on Dec. 20 sought to remove her ventilator.

Her mother, Nailah Winkfield, refusing to believe her daughter was dead as long as her heart was beating, went to court to stop the machine from being disconnected and twice won injunctions stopping the hospital. On Friday, the two sides reached an agreement, allowing Jahi to be transferred to an undisclosed facility.

— Associated Press

FREMONT

Suspected arson fire prompts evacuation

Residents at a Fremont apartment complex were briefly evacuated Tuesday morning after a suspected arson fire broke out in a laundry room.

No injuries were reported in the one-alarm fire at Century Village Apartments, located at 41299 Paseo Padre Parkway, shortly after midnight.

An investigation revealed the fire started in a washing machine and determined to have been started by an arsonist. The Fremont Fire Department has a lead in the case and is working with the Fremont Police Department.

The apartment complex had recently installed sprinklers, which fire responders credited with keeping the fire confined to the laundry room.

— Karina Ioffee, Staff

oakland

2 injured in shooting on MacArthur

A shooting Tuesday night in East Oakland left two men wounded, police said.

The victims’ wounds were not considered life-threatening and police say the men were not cooperating with investigators.

Police say the shooting took place at 8:56 p.m. in the 10000 block of MacArthur Boulevard just off Foothill Boulevard, said Officer J. Moore.

Officers learned that two men were injured in the shooting and transported themselves to a hospital to be treated for gunshot wounds.

The men were uncooperative with the investigation, police said.

No arrests have been made, and no motive has been established for the shooting.

Police and Crime Stoppers of Oakland are offering up to $10,000 for information leading to the arrest of the suspect or suspects. Anyone with information can call police at 510-238-3426 or a tip line at 510-773-2805 or Crime Stoppers at 510-777-8572.

— Natalie Neysa Alund, Staff

Richmond

Four escape before tanker explodes

Four men emerged uninjured after escaping a building just before a tanker with gas fumes exploded inside of it Wednesday, a battalion chief said.

The explosion about 11:35 a.m. rocked QualaWash, located at 2750 Goodrick Avenue near the Richmond Parkway, and blew a 10-foot hole in the building’s steel roof, Richmond fire Battalion Chief Merlin Turner said. The company offers cleaning services for tankers, and the men were treating a double tanker that carries gas, Turner said.

Another truck, designed to contain liquid asphalt, was idling as part of its cleaning process, and let out a spark, Turner said. That spark caused the gas tanker to heat up and explode, he said.

“All four of the people heard a whistling sound in the tank and realized what was happening,” Turner said of the sound the gas fumes made just before the explosion. “So they dropped everything and ran out of the building. Very lucky.”

Both of the tankers were destroyed.

Turner said the explosion lifted both trucks off the ground and also damaged some plumbing drains inside the building. Crews brought the fire under control in about 20 minutes by “aggressively attacking the flames with foam,” Turner said. He said investigators are trying to determine what caused the sequence of events that led to the explosion.